Ice-cool killer who showed no emotion in interviews

LUCY LETBY was ‘cool’ and devoid of emotion when talking about the murder of babies, a police officer who interviewed her has revealed.

Detective Sergeant Danielle Stonier said questioning Letby was ‘surreal’ at times – and she believes the nurse only spoke to police because she wanted to know what evidence they had against her, to try to outsmart them.

DS Stonier said: ‘Some of the evidence we were putting to her was really graphic in detail, the allegations were horrific.

‘Some people would be throwing the chairs, saying, “Look you need to go and speak to such and such. I shouldn’t be here, this is completely wrong”– but Letby was calm, she was quite cool, she answered the questions, she was confident with the answers. She talked but there was no emotion.’

Letby was arrested and questioned three times by Cheshire Police – in July 2018, June 2019 and November 2020, when she was finally charged. In total, she was quizzed for more than 21 hours over eight days.

Often suspects refuse to co-operate when arrested for serious crimes but Letby spoke to DS Stonier and colleagues for long periods, often explaining complex medical procedures and terms and providing them with details they were eventually able to use to build the case against her. Asked why Letby hadn’t simply answered ‘no comment’ to questions, DS Stonier said: ‘We were putting to her witness statements and medical evidence, she obviously wanted to hear that.

‘If she had gone “no comment”, were we going to disclose further information? She wanted to get more information out of us, to know what we’d got on her.’

Even when Letby was charged with 22 murder and attempted

‘She wanted to know what we’d got on her’

murder offences, she remained composed, said DS Stonier.

‘It was the same Lucy Letby we’ve seen,’ she added. ‘She listened to all the charges. A third of the way through you could feel some emotion coming through from her, but was it emotion over the severity of the offences or a feeling of “I’m not going home’’?

‘The natural thing is to cry and it becomes uncontrollable, but she has this ability to mentally switch off, to disengage to get through it.’